Catalan Parliament admits the initiative for a referendum of independence

8 June 20108 Comments

Today the Catalan Parliament has admitted a popular referendum initiative to organise a referendum of independence. Two proposals were made using the recently approved “popular consultations” law which allows the Catalan Government to organise referendums. There’s a catch though, before taking place the referendum has to be approved by the Spanish Parliament .

There were two proposals sent to the Catalan Parliament a few days ago, the first one, submitted by David Vinyals and other members of Reagrupament, just asked the same question that has been voted in the popular referendums for independence “Do you want the Catalan nation to become a state of right, independent, democratical and social within the European Union?” This initiative has been rejected by the Parliament since the question does not abide to the Spanish constitution, where secession is not comtemplated.

The one formulated by Alfons López Tena and Uriel Bertran has been admitted: “So that the Catalan Parliament takes the necessary measures to make effective popular will, do you want the Catalan nation to become a state of right, independent, democratical and social within the European Union?” which basically is abiding to the Spanish constitution since the Catalan Parliament has the right to initiate constitutional amendments.

In any case, even though I support this initiative since I believe we should move towards independence using every tool at our disposal I criticise this initiative for two reasons.

Firstly, by processing a referendum of independence within the Spanish legal system we are implicitly legitimizing Spanish legality. Since Spanish legality is based on the right of conquest of Spain over Catalonia and therefore illegitimate abiding to the Spanish system we are implicity legitimizing the current situation. Not a good idea.

Secondly, since it is a popular initiative the organisers now need to gather 220.000 signatures, which is 3% of the population of Catalonia, the Parliament won’t debate the approval of the initiative until this requirement is fulfilled and this will take until after the elections. If the debate took place right now and the initiative was rejected by the current parties voters would be able to change their vote so that the new Parliament approves a new referendum initiative right after the elections. Otherwise we may have to wait 4 more years.

Finally, the strategy is so that if the Catalan parties finally approve the referendum they’ll have to ask permission to Spain. Spain will never allow this. This will create a conflict of legitimacies that would effectively allow the Generalitat to organise the referendum anyway based on the right of self-determination of the nations under international supervision.

In any case, forcing all the political parties to debate about the issue is an enormous victory of Catalan independentism, we’ll see how this evolves.

There is no absolute “right of self-determination of the nations”. The right to self-determination as mentioned in Article 1 of the ICCPR was introduced with the intention to end colonialism, it is in conflict with the principle of territorial integrity and there are no mechanisms to enforce it.

So… good luck!

# 18 June 2010 at 12:14 pm

Candide said:

Oh… there is also the problem of defining “nation” or, as the ICCPR puts it: “people”.

# 18 June 2010 at 12:17 pm

Albert (author) said:

The vast majority of current states in the world became independent during the 20th century, independence is a very normal thing, not only that but achieving independence from Spain is a very normal thing as well.

On the other hand, the Spanish have a deep lack of a democratical culture, that’s why they’ve always resorted to violence. The first Spanish Parliament was created in the 19th century while Catalonia had one of the first Parliaments in Europe since the 13th century.

This lack of democratical culture together with not being able to resort to violence makes them shield themselves behind the laws to stop the legitimate democratic demands as if these laws had been written on stone or created by a higher entity. Laws have never stopped a nation that wants to regain its independence.

Even nowadays we can see the process in Belgium, in the heart of Europe, nobody has yet questioned that the Flemish don’t have the right to do whatever they decide.

Reality is stubborn and laws eventually follow reality.

# 18 June 2010 at 4:52 pm

Candide said:

You’re entirely besides the points I brought up, but so be it.

Secession is a possibility, laws can be changed. I prefer peaceful and legal change. But before that you’d better come to a decision about the borders of that “Catalonia” you want as an independent state.

[...] about whether to give a go ahead to the Popular Initiative for a Referendum of Independence. The first voting a few weeks ago was affirmative. This time all Catalan parties unanimously voted against it. They argued that they took this [...]

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Facts about Catalonia

85% of the public works budgeted by Spain in 2007 were never built. In August 2008 only 139 million euros out of the 914 million euros initially budgeted had been actually built.— Cercle d’Estudis Sobiranistes